VASTA Newsletter: 98

	Vol. 12 No. 3VASTA Fall 98 p. 17

(continue from p.16 - Tkatch )

(Peter Jack Tkatch cont.) During the summer he performed in The Fantasticks (Bellomy) and Charley's Aunt (Brassett) at St. Michael's Playhouse in Colchester, VT. During the fall semester he is coaching dialects for Getting Out and directing The Dinning Room at the Royal Tyler Theatre in the UVM Department of Theatre/VT Stage Co. season.

Kittie Verdolini is pursuing her research on voice physiology for voice therapy and mind brain models of learning for voice. She has received a five year grant from the National Institute of Health (National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders) for this research. She is thinking about performing again (just thinking, for now). In the meantime, she continues to work as a clinician with performers with voice problems at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, the Brigham and Women's Hospital, and the MA Eye and Ear Infirmary, Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Mid Atlantic

Estelle Aden conducted the Eighth Annual Sonnet Read-In at Hofstra University on April 23rd, celebrating the 434th commemoration of Shakespeare's birth. Estelle organized the reading when she realized that her students were limited to only four sonnets per semester. The Read-In takes approximately three and a half hours, the cumulative effect of which has many satisfying benefits. While the marathon was started for voice students, it has become a campus-wide event.

Mary Baird has been busy teaching privately between doing

two films and performing in the Miranda Theatre's production of Key West. She participated in Louis Colaianni's Phonetics and Accents Workshop this summer.

Michael J. Barnes dialect coached Temple Theaters' productions of A Streetcar Named Desire and Arcadia. The production of Travels with My Aunt, which he coached for Rep Stage Company in Maryland, was nominated for the Helen Hayes Award for Best Production in the Washington, D.C. area. This summer he worked with Catherine Fitzmaurice and her other associates training new Associate Teachers of Fitzmaurice Voice Work. He dialect coached the Wilma Theatre's Psychic Life of Savages and is finishing up work as the dialect and voice coach of Hard Times at People's Light and Theatre Company and Candida at Pearl Theatre Off-Broadway.

* Candice Brown, State University of NY at Fredonia, directed and dialect coached a production of Crimes of the Heart. She is vocal and movement coaching Dracula and Sweet Charity in the Spring, and performing Kate in Dancing at Lughnasa which opens at the Marvel Theatre in February. She is developing two new courses: Period Movement and Silent & Vocal Masks - A two part course of Le Coq mask work followed by work in Voice Over. Candice is coordinating the Arthur Lessac six-week intensive, June 14-July 23 at Fredonia: interested parties please contact her for more information. Also she is Chair of the VASTA '99 Summer Conference in Toronto.

Janet Feindel was on the faculty of the "Care of the Professional Voice Symposium" in Philadelphia for

her sixth year, and she will be presenting at the "Canadian Voice Care Symposium" in Banff (May 1999). She was voice/text consultant (her fifth season) for Canadian Stage Company's Romeo and Juliet. She is coaching A Midsummer Night's Dream at Pittsburgh Public Theatre and Loves Labour's Lost for Carnegie Mellon University Mainstage. Last year she coached Kiss Me Kate and Berlin to Broadway for CMU. She also directed Chocolate Cake for CMU's studio season and facilitated the formation of an Eating Disorder Student Support Group.

Catherine Fitzmaurice taught a five-week Certification Program in New York City assisted by her Master teachers Paul Backer (USC), Nancy Houfek (ART/Harvard), Lynn Innerst (Seattle), Dudley Knight (UCI), Joan Melton (CSF), Donna Snow (Temple), and Associate Teacher Michael Barnes (Temple). Eight new Associate Teachers are now certified to teach Fitzmaurice Voicework: Cynthia Barrett (UNC-Charlotte), Micha Espinosa (Miami), David Howey (U of Arts, Phila.), Roberta Sloan (UC Oklahoma), Phil Thompson (Ohio State U), Lynn Watson (UCI), Walton Wilson (New York), and Grace Zandarski (New York). Catherine presented a workshop at ATHE in San Antonio and a paper at the International Society for the Study of European Ideas in Haifa, Israel in August. A five-day workshop in Musical Theatre, together with Joan Melton, was offered at Cal State-Fullerton in June, and another is planned for NYC around the New Year. A five-day with Master teachers and Associate Teachers is planned for June '99 at ART/Harvard (contact Nancy Houfek) and another five-week Certification in the summer of 2000.(continued on page 18)